


Just a Little Thaumaplasty

by SinisterScribe



Series: Strange Cases [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Emmet Swan Returns Once Again, F/M, Henry and Regina Mothership Feels, Hurt/Comfort, I kinda feel like he's a lost Hemsworth, Regina and Emmet, Regina makes omelette, Rule 63, i don't wanna start wanna start a gender argument yo, just wanted to make that clear, masculine/feminine interchangeable with other opposites, not Regina and the omelette, so trigger warnings for that I guess, they kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 17:30:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14857089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterScribe/pseuds/SinisterScribe
Summary: A direct continuation of the previous installation in the series.In which Henry gets to spend some quality time with his momma, a little backstory in this altered universe is explored and Emmet is having a bad night.He comes to Regina to make it all better.Naturally.Results may vary.





	Just a Little Thaumaplasty

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, another installment for Strange Cases. 
> 
> Not sure that I like the second half of this chapter very much. It seemed fine when I wrote it about three years ago but now...ugg. 
> 
> Suffice to say that gender and the opposites it represents in this fic obviously does not translate across into the real world. I know the issues related to gender a lot more complicated and it's a big part of why I ditched on writing this thing in the first place. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you guys like it a little.

**_The Manor…_ **

****

There was a hammering at the door and Regina was ignoring it.

She was in no mood to deal with mobs or yobs of dwarves so she was going to sit there and eat her ice cream and brood.

It had been a while since she’d had a good brood and she found herself falling readily into the almost trancelike state that allowed her to thoroughly chew over a problem until it completely lost its flavour and she could move onto the next one.

She tensed when the hammering stopped and the lock clicked over.

Sucking the spoon slowly from her mouth, Regina slipped down off the stool at the island worktop in the kitchen and padded out into the hallway. She was armed only with a silver dessert spoon but she didn’t see why she should feel threatened at all with just that. She’d killed a man with a teacup once. If she could manage with fine bone china she could certainly manage with something metal.    

Regina paused in the shadows of the hallway when the door swung open, she’d be difficult to see in the dark. Her hold shifted on the spoon and she waited calmly. In all honesty, she expected one of the midgets but it was an even smaller figure than that which slipped into the foyer and looked about themselves.

“Henry?”

Light suddenly filled the hallway as she silently flipped the light switch with a flicker of magic. She frowned at her son.

“Mom!” Henry grinned and dashed across the distance that separated them, hurling himself against her and squeezing her tightly. “You’re okay!”

“Um…yes.” Regina rested her hand on top of his head and looked up when she found him alone. “Did you come here by yourself?”

“Emmet dropped me off.” Henry lifted his head and propped his chin against her chest. He smiled at her. “He told me what happened. He thought you might want some company.”

“And he made _you_ come?” Regina’s frown deepened.

“No.” Henry frowned right back at her in confusion. “I wanted to come. You were hurt and I don’t get to see you very much. I missed you and this meant that I got to come and stay.”

“I’m not going after the dwarves.” Regina sighed. “If nothing else, I’m too tired.”

“I know that.” Henry grinned at her. “If you wanted to do something, Sleepy would already be hanging from his underpants from a powerline somewhere.”

Regina arched an eyebrow at him.

“What?” He asked innocently.

“Nobody’s getting hanged from anywhere by their underwear.”

“Not even if I ask you very nicely?”

Regina tilted her head.

“Hey, you just got hit by a truck that some moron was driving even though he knew he shouldn’t be. It’s worse than drunk driving, he could have hit anybody and that’s, y’know, bad and stuff but he hit _you_ and I’m mad at him and I wanna kick him in the shins.”

“Kick him…in the shins?” Regina worked down a smile.

“’Til my leg gets tired.” Henry beamed at her.

Regina looked down at him for a long moment and realised that he still hadn’t let go of her. He still hugged her tightly to him like he really had been worried for her. Maybe he had been. Maybe he was.

“There’s no need for that. Emmet has already made his position quite clear on the matter and I think the dwarves are ready to wet their collective combinations at the very prospect of Emmet’s temper being roused again.”

“Ruby told me he was gonna pull Leroy’s arms off.”

“Ruby should learn to censor herself for a ten year old.”

“I’m nearly eleven.” Henry reminded.

“Oh, my apologies, I shall break out the scotch and cigars.”

“Cool!” Henry grinned up at her and she shook her head and looped her arms around him. She gave him a light squeeze, one that he returned only moreso, and dropped a kiss on top of his head.

“How I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

Regina smiled into his hair and straightened up. She held him at arm’s length and studied him a long moment.

“You’ve lost weight.” She decided.

“I’m a growing boy.” Henry shrugged.

“Hmm, one is supposed to _feed_ a growing boy. Must I give Emmet lessons in the culinary arts as well as the mystical?” Regina rolled her eyes and turned away from him. “Come on, I’ll cook something.”

“You don’t have to!” Henry hurried after her. “If you’re not feeling alright.”

“I feel as if half of me is left.” Regina hauled open the fridge after stowing the ice cream she’d been savouring in the freezer and continued in a more serious tone when Henry made a frustrated sound. “I’m fine. Emmet healed me. I’ve never felt better.”

“Emmet healed you?” Henry tilted his head. “How?”

“Magic.” Regina rummaged. She had eggs…ham…some leftover potatoes…Spanish omelette?

“Duh.” Henry dropped his backpack by the island work surface, wriggled out of his coat and dumped it on top of it and then clambered up onto a stool. He knelt with his elbows propped on the counter top and really paid attention to what she said next.

“There’s no real other explanation for it, Henry. I wasn’t well and he used his magic to replenish and guide mine so that I would heal.”

“You said that people –sorcerers- had to be real close for that kind of stuff. Not just holding onto you, which he’d have to do too, but –like- friends or family.”

Regina stilled in the act of laying the ingredients for the omelette out onto the counter and sucked in a deep breath.

And therein was the rub.

“I helped Emmet build his magic. I know his wards because he based them on my own. It allows a certain…” Regina waved her hand trying to summon a word other than the obvious one.

“Intimacy?” Henry raised his eyebrows at her.

“What…have you been told about intimacy?” Regina narrowed her eyes a little.

“We got a talk at school.” Henry shrugged his shoulders. “About what’s acceptable intimacy between people. Like, for strangers it’s a handshake or maybe just a wave and for family it’s hugs and kisses and stuff.”

“Ri-ight…” Regina pondered that a moment and then shrugged a shoulder. “Very well, in that case, yes. A sorcerer would have to be intimate with another one in order to heal them in the way Emmet did me. It’s a matter of trust. As is all intimacy.”

Henry frowned and tilted his head at her and she smiled at him.

“Well, that’s a conversation for another time and preferably another parent.” Regina lifted a glass bowl down out of one of the cabinets and turned back to the counter so she could begin preparations for dinner.

“Why?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older.” Regina used her favourite line when she didn’t want to explain something.

“Aww, mooo-oom!” Henry huffed at being rebuffed in such a way but he didn’t push it. “Fine. Keep your grownup secrets.”

“I shall.”

Henry stuck his tongue out at her and laughed when she did the same. He was grinning inanely at her when she turned her attention back to seasoning the eggs and milk and it took her a moment to notice his regard.

“What?”

“You smile more now.”

“I see you more now.”

“Not really.” Henry scrunched his nose and shook his head. There was a little something of sadness in his voice and Regina stilled in chopping up the cold potatoes.

“Yes I do.”

“Nah, you see Emmet a lot more and…sometimes I’m there…but it’s not the same.”

“Oh, Henry,” Regina set the knife aside and thought how to explain, “it’s part of my parole agreement, if you will. I tutor Emmet so I can see you more often. If I could see you every day then I would but that’s not going to happen.”

“Why?” Henry frowned at her, seemingly genuinely confused.

“Well, because…your family.”

“ _You’re_ my family.” Henry leaned a little over the counter and looked her right in the eye. “You can see me any time you like, mom. Nobody’s stopping you.”

“Nobody’s stopping me because we’re all aware exactly how long a leash they have me on.” Regina chopped a potato so viciously she scored into the chopping board and forced herself to calm. She tried again. “There’s only so far I can go before they give it a yank and I’m cut off from you again.”

“They wouldn’t do that. Not now. You can come over if you want to.”

“Oh, every day? For breakfast, lunch and dinner?” Regina scoffed but Henry remained serious.

“Sure.”

Regina stilled, staring at him. She slowly shook her head.

“I’m not allowed, Henry. I have to be on my extra special best behaviour just to see you in _their_ house, hell, to get them to let you come here I had to be hit with a truck.”

“That’s not true!” Henry frowned at her.

Ah, here we go, Regina thought.

“We were _all_ worried about you!” Henry shrugged his shoulders when he had to be honest. “Okay, maybe gramps not so much, but he didn’t say anything when I said I wanted to come over! He even let Emmet use his truck to drive me over so he wouldn’t get folded in half in the Bug.”

Regina blinked at him. That seemed…improbable.

Not Charming loaning Emmet the truck, they were all sharers in that family, but them all being worried over her.

“I will not be welcome in their house. I’d have to live there to see you as often as I wanted to.”

“That’d be a little crowded.” Henry frowned.

“Hmm.” Regina agreed absently, turning her attention to the makings of omelette.

Crowded, yes, but also tense, irritable and more than likely to end in blood and fire. Regina was not a people person at the best of times and adding the Charmings into the mix was a recipe for disaster with a side of devastation.

“We can figure something out.” Henry assured her with a soft smile. “I’m not giving up on you. You taught me that family is important and you have to try everything to keep it together…” He looked down a moment as he remembered that hadn’t worked out so well for her. He swallowed hard and forged on. “It took me a while to get what you were doing and where you were coming from but…I get it now and…I want that too. I want to keep my family together. All of us.”

“Well, that’s a nice sentiment, Henry, but I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.”

“But…”

“I killed Snow’s father.” Regina spoke softly but the words fell heavily into the room. “I had him murdered in his bed. That is not something that can be forgiven or forgotten. I will never have…”

Regina looked down at the bowl and clenched her jaw. She felt her eyes burn and closed them against the sensation. She heaved out a deep breath and tried again.

“There is no redemption for me, Henry. Some things can never be forgiven and becoming a black widow tends to be one of them.”

“Emmet talked to me about this.” Henry’s voice was quiet, as if he hadn’t meant to say it, and her head snapped up to look at him.

“What. Did he say?” Regina’s eyes flashed and Henry didn’t react to her anger. Not that ignoring it would make it go away but if he stayed calm and got his explanation out rather than panicking, she probably wouldn’t escalate.

“Not a lot. He said you must have had your reasons.”

“That’s all?” Regina frowned, relaxing a little.

“He looked sad though.” Henry nodded and picked at a rough edge of the worktop. “And mad. He looked hella mad.”

“Well, murdering his grandfather is more than likely to…”

“For you.”

“What?”

“He was mad _for_ you.” Henry nodded. “I’m sure of it. He got sad and then mad –the angriest I’ve ever seen him even if it was all just in his eyes- then he said he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. That if you could put it behind you then so could we.”

“Really? He said all that?” Regina frowned and honestly couldn’t backwards engineer the logic behind it.

Henry nodded and hunched his shoulders in a shrug.

“He cares about you, mom.”

Regina looked away from him and down at the eggs and milk. She stirred the mixture idly with the whisk, watching the yellows mix through one another. She didn’t know what to do with that. She shook herself.

“Well, that hardly matters…”

“Of course it matters.” Henry frowned at her. “It’s the only thing that matters.”

“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one.”

“Don’t do the drawling thing, sarcasm doesn’t work on me.” Henry scowled at her. “Can’t you just admit that you like him?”

“Even if I did –and I’m not saying I do- what difference would it make?”

“Well, for a start, it would be nice for Emmet to –y’know- have a friend.”

“Emmet has plenty of friends.” Regina shrugged.

“Name five.”

“Well…there’s Ruby.”

“One.” Henry held up a finger.

“And then there’s…” Regina’s mind went blank for a moment. Then another and another. She frowned.

Granny…well, Granny didn’t have friends, per se, she collected wayward pups to look after. Leroy definitely wasn’t on Emmet’s favourite person list or vice versa. Ditto for the rest of the dwarves. Snow and Charming were his parents, they couldn’t do that and be his friend. Neal might have been a friend, back in the day, but he was…gone now. Gold was, well, he was just him. 

“Well, he has family coming out of his ears. That has to count for something.” Regina picked up her omelette mix and moved to the hob, pulling out a pan and setting it over the heat.

“Family counts for a lot,” Henry dropped down off the stool and followed her over to the hob to boost himself up onto the counter beside her, “but it’s not the same as having someone choose to be with you just because. Even Ruby’s kind of boxed into it because she’s his godmother.”

“Well, technically, I’m family too.” Regina hunched her shoulders in a shrug. “His grandmother in-law if you will.”

“I most certainly will not.” Henry scowled at her. “That doesn’t count.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because.”

“Because you say so?”

“Do you gotta have a better reason?” Henry raised his eyebrows at her. “Why are you fighting this so much? Is the world gonna end if you have a friend? One person in your corner because they choose to be, because they like you, because they want to spend time with you and because they want to know you better. Is that such a horrible thing?”

“Why take the chance?” Regina poured the egg mix into the hot pan.

Henry huffed out an irritated breath and Regina relented a little.

“Emmet would not benefit from having me as a friend.” She told him gently, resting a hand on his knee. “I’m not the most popular of people and it’s hardly fair to Emmet to be tarred with that same brush, is it?”

“Emmet doesn’t care!”

“And the fact that I do counts for nothing?”

Henry opened his mouth and then clapped it shut. He thought for a moment and spoke in a defeated little voice.

“Mom, you caring about people is the second most important thing in the world to me.”

Regina blinked, caught off guard. She frowned.

“What’s the first?”

“You having people to care about you.” He smiled a little. “I do, but I’m only little and there’s not much I can do if I have to protect you. Emmet’s much bigger than me and he has magic. He’s getting good so he could fight with you if you needed him to.”

“I hardly need protecting.”

“Mom, you got taken out by a dwarf today. A dwarf!”

“In a _truck_.” Regina picked at the edges of the omelette with her spatula. “Hardly a fair fight.”

“Mom, you could probably park the moon in our garage if you wanted to, I don’t think a truck would hold up against you too well.” Henry thrust out his hands. “And Greg and Tamara are still out there!”

Regina stilled at that.

Henry pressed his lips together and looked down at his sneakers. He was quiet a long moment and she didn’t push him.

“I’ve never been so scared as when gramps brought you back from what Greg did to you. You were just _hanging_ there all wrong in his arms and then you were so still in the bed and you didn’t wake up when I called on you and…the world was too heavy. I could only hear my heartbeat in my head, I noticed every single detail about you and I can’t forget them. Your face was stained with tears and your wrists and ankles were red raw, there was blood on your mouth, they said you’d bitten your tongue and…”

“Henry.” She cut him off gently. “It’s alright. I’m fine.”

“Yeah. Now you are. You weren’t then. I thought you were never gonna be okay again and all I could think of was the things I hadn’t told you. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told you I loved you and I didn’t know if you could hear me but I told you over and over and over.”

“I heard you.” Regina cupped his face and smiled for him. “I was out of it, things were hazy, but I heard that. It gave me strength, Henry. It kept me going.”

“So you see what I mean?” Henry spoke urgently. “You get why you have to have someone watch your back? I don’t ever want that to happen to you again.”

“It won’t.”

“But…”

“It _won’t_.” Regina told him firmly. “The cuff they used to cut me off from my magic was electromagnetic in origin. It put up a kind of dampening field around my body that stopped me from drawing magic in from the air around me to use. Very clever, admittedly, but I’m smarter. I’ve made it so that I can’t be taken by the same trick twice. They can never use that cuff or anything like it on me again.”

“How’d you get round it?”

“Well, the cuff cut me off from the magic around me, so I now have magic _in_ me. Every time I inhale, I take in a tiny bit of magic and it is stored in my bones. My skeleton is a battery, if you will. I will always have a little bit of magic to use if I have to.”

“Just a little bit? Will it be enough to get you away from them?”

“Not enough to teleport, taking in too much would make me glow in the dark and begin to melt a little bit, but certainly enough to defend myself.”  

She decided not to add that defending herself would be to conjure an air bubble in Greg’s brain and give him an aneurism. Then again there was also the possibility of insulating his heart against the electrical signals it needed in order to beat (a fitting irony she thought). Giving his blood the pH of industrial grade sulphuric acid. Making him vomit up his lungs. Setting fire to the adipose tissue in his body or even just rupturing his thoracic cavity so that his heart fell out into her palm still red raw and beating.

Not that she’d thought about it at all.

“It would be kind of cool to glow in the dark.” Henry gave a wan smile but his heart wasn’t in it.

“I mean it, Henry. I’m fine. They caught me by surprise once, that’s all. Now that I know it can happen, I can counter it.”

“What if they don’t try the same trick twice? What if they do something new and that catches you by surprise too?”

Regina was quiet a long moment and pressed her lips together. She debated on whether or not she should tell him and then decided that keeping it to herself was selfish. She had wanted him to believe that she had put her killing days behind her but…if worrying for her safety was keeping him up at night…

“I think Greg is dead.”

Henry’s head snapped up and he looked at her with wide eyes.

“What?”

“I don’t think you saw, when they were trying to drag you into that portal, you were too focussed on Emma,” she was watching her omelette so she didn’t notice a brief flicker of shame cross over Henry’s face, “but…I…did you hear the thunder?”

Henry frowned and gave that its due consideration. He searched his memories and nodded slowly.

“I think so, I thought it was the portal, but I did hear thunder.”

“Well, where there is thunder there is lightning and the lightning struck…Greg. In the heart. It might have hit Tamara too. I couldn’t see properly before they tumbled through the portal but there was smoke and –thankfully you wouldn’t recognise it- but the smell of burnt flesh.”

“Oh, that explains the bacon smell.” Henry wrinkled his nose and then let out an explosive sigh. “You really hit him with lightning?”

Regina’s jaw clenched and she nodded with a stilted movement.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Henry frowned and her wide eyes darted to his. He hunched his shoulders and didn’t look repentant in the slightest. “He _tortured_ you mom, he was trying to take me away to do who knows what with me and…I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad he can’t hurt us anymore. You shouldn’t be sorry either. You were doing what you always do which is looking out for me. You’ve done it from day one which is why when I shouted for my mom that day on the docks…I was calling for _you._ ”

“You were looking at Emma.” Regina frowned, a little irritated that he thought he might fool her into feeling better about that kind of thing.

“And I was thinking that she’d never be able to save me.” Henry murmured and looked down at his sneakers again. His head snapped up suddenly. “Don’t tell him. Please don’t. I…I’m trying to trust him. I really want to but…Emma was only around for a little while and then she turned into Emmet, and I _know_ they’re the same person, but…Emmet could never kill someone to save me. He’s too good and, maybe it’s wrong to feel this way, but…I’d hurt someone to save you, mom. I’d hurt them real bad.”

Regina looked at him and ached for him. She rested her fingers on his knee and then turned her hand under his when it came down on top of her knuckles. She laced their fingers together and ducked her head a little so that he would look at her.

“It’s natural to feel that way, Henry. It’s human nature to want to protect your own. I’m not saying that you should walk around with a mallet and a can do attitude if one of your family gets a hangnail but…Emmet _would_ hurt someone to keep you safe and he would do it without blinking. The only difference that day was that I knew I could hurt Greg from that distance and I could do it without harming you. We’re your parents, Henry. We love you more than anything in the world. We would do everything in our _considerable_ power to keep you safe. Never doubt that. Not for a moment.”

“That’s nice and all.” Henry huffed out a breath and then admitted the thing he didn’t want to tell her. “But I can’t do that for you. Not yet, maybe not ever, and that’s _horrible_. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to feel helpless, or maybe you don’t want to remember if you ever did, I sure don’t want to feel it.”

Regina’s jaw clenched when she couldn’t think of anything to say that might comfort him. magically, yes, he was helpless. There was _something_ about him. Something that had allowed him to both see through the curse and break it. Something that made him so brave, so kind, so _good_ despite being raised by her.

She refused to believe it was simply genetics. The Charmings just couldn’t be good at everything. There was something to be said for nurture over nature and she hoped it said that she hadn’t completely fucked up when it came to raising her little boy.

She had at least taught him to be clever and that so often came back to bite her. Now included. There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t come across as meaningless platitude.

All she could do was listen.

“The only thing worse than this was when I had to turn myself into a brat to push you away. When I had to become this mean thing so that I could wreck your entire life. Sometimes I wish…” Henry’s voice sank into a whisper and his eyes shone too brightly. “I wish I wasn’t one of the good guys. ‘Cause then I wouldn’t have hurt the person that loved me from the beginning and…I _never_  want to do that again. Not ever. Not for anything.”

“Oh, Henry.” Regina leaned over and engulfed him in her arms, hugging him tightly. She spoke into his ear and tried to do _something_ to comfort him. “You can’t help being good, being so unbelievably kind, so gentle right down to your very soul. It is not at all a bad thing and –whilst it can hurt- I wouldn’t wish for you to be any other way at all. It took me a long time to learn it, but loving someone is never a weakness. I love you so much and it’s what gave me the strength to go on when it would have been so much easier to just give in to that dark and selfish person that I can so easily be. You saved my life, Henry. You saved me more than the Saviour ever could.”

“I just didn’t think I’d have ever done something unforgivable by the time I was ten.” His voice was shaky and he clung to her fiercely.

“It is not unforgiveable to have destroyed the Evil Queen. You freed me of it, Henry. I am me again. For the most part.”

“And I want to keep that. I want to keep that all to myself.” He drew away from her, gulping down his tears before they could fall. She blinked rapidly, trying to do the same and nearly laughed at that. “But I can’t. I can’t because I can’t protect you like you always did for me. There’s Emmet, though, and he wants the same as me. I know it. Please let him in. _Please._ Please just try. For me until it’s for you too.”

“Henry, I…” Regina looked down and shook her head.

“I’ll beg. On my hands and knees, I’ll get on the floor and beg. Whatever I have to do, it’s done, just…”

“Henry, no.” Her voice was firm, immovable. “Never give up your self respect and _especially_ not for me.”

“You’re the only one worth giving it up for.”

Regina closed her eyes and turned her head from him. She heaved out a breath and her hands tightened on his.   

“All I’m asking is for you to try. To try as hard as you did to come back from the dark all the way and let someone other than me in. Please. Pretty please. With cherries on top.”

She chuckled at that. It had been his favoured form of wheedling something from her when he had been young and back before the rift between them. He had bargained and bargained until his pleading must surely have been ten feet tall.

“Very well. I promise I can try. Though you’re going to have to let me go.”

He frowned at her.

“Seriously, Henry, I need both hands back. The omelette is burning.” She smiled at him and he laughed, releasing her hands immediately.

“Can’t have that.”

“Indeed not.”

“I love the way you talk.”

Regina smiled, working the spatula under the edges of the omelette and saving it from becoming a charcoal briquette pancake.

“Just because your father has the enunciation of a gorilla with a stammer does not mean I must follow his example.” Regina arched an eyebrow at him and stilled when she saw a thoughtful look on his face. “What is it?”

“Nothing. I just…I never thought of Emmet that way. As my dad, I mean.”

“Why not?” Regina frowned at him. “He was your mother, back before he was a he.” Regina stopped talking before that sentence got away from her.

“I know.” Henry nodded and mulled it over carefully. “Do you think it hurts him that I don’t call him dad? It took me a long time to call Emma mom after all.”

“I suppose I didn’t teach you to trust very well.” She said rather than answer that. She didn’t think she had the right to speak for Emmet in that way. Even if she knew fine and well that it _did_ hurt him, this new distance between their son and himself.

Still, Regina wasn’t in a hurry for Henry to have Emmet dubbed ‘dad’. Not for the reasons he might imagine either. There was something about the way him being the father of her child sounded that made her skittish and she’d much prefer not to think about it, thank you very much.

“Not everything sucky I do is your fault.” Henry told her but not unkindly. He chuckled suddenly. “It’s funny, I went from having two moms to having two dads. How very modern.”

Regina blinked at him, her lips twitching, then she burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it.

Henry looked stunned for a moment and then laughed at her laughing. He was just too happy not to.

Maybe, just maybe, if breaking the curse had let out this side of his mom, if she really meant that she was free of the Evil Queen…

Maybe wrecking the Evil Queen’s life had given her a chance at a new one.

Maybe it wasn’t unforgiveable what he had done.

Henry certainly hoped so.  

 

**_That Night…_ **

 

Regina bolted awake to a jangling of the wards over the house and went still as she set her mind to reading that particular intrusion over them.

She stilled with a sigh when she realised that it was simply Emmet giving the magical version of a knock with his usual subtlety. That was to say, as gently as a lemon wrapped around a brick upside the head.

Regina glanced at the clock and growled when she saw it was precisely the middle of the night. She levered herself out of bed and struggled into a robe in the dark, bleary and not at all pleased at being so rudely awakened.

She left the room to pad along the corridor, briefly checking on Henry on her way, and slipped down the stairs to open the front door to Emmet.

She opened her mouth to make some snide comment about him not being able to trust her to keep Henry for even one night when she had managed just fine for ten years before he had ever bothered to show his face. Her face. Whatever.

Though her promise to _try,_ for Henry, reared its undesirable head and she stalled that. Several more options for a greeting scrolled through her head and she realised that she had to say something and blurted the fifty seventh thing that came to mind.

“You look like hammered shit.”

Emmet blinked at her language and she scowled at him, wrapping her robe tighter about herself and moved to cover her embarrassment.

“Let’s see you have a stellar vocabulary at three in the morning.”

“I don’t feel so good.”

“Thus my point is proved.” She snarked even before his words caught up with her and the input from her eyes reached conscious thought.

It was true, he did look exceedingly rough. His skin seemed pale and a cold sweat slicked him, his hair was lank, dark shadows circled eyes dulled of their usual shimmering magic.

She stepped back and held the door wider.

“Come in.”

He huffed out a relieved breath, nearly falling over the threshold and she moved to catch him on instinct. He leaned heavily against her and then she really was worried.

 Emmet had taken to the family chivalry with remarkable ease. He was unbelievably gentle around her, forebearing from punching her in the head even when she had sorely deserved it sometimes, he even opened doors for her and now he relied on her strength to hold them both up despite her being half his size.

“Come on.” Her muscles might not be able to hold them up but her magic took up the slack and closed the door besides.

She slipped under his arm and supported him into the living room, settling him on the couch.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Emmet sagged back against the leather cushions of the couch. “I felt funny when I left the diner earlier but I thought it was just the backlash from the healing spell. I ate dinner with mom and dad and thought that would help. Didn’t. Pot roast’s not nearly so good the second time you see it.” He managed a scant smile for her. “I tried to sleep and couldn’t. I knew it was magic when the door started to bang. I didn’t know who else to go to.”

“The door?” Regina frowned at him, sitting down on the couch with him. “Was your magic moving things without conscious decision on your part?”

That was bad. That was _really_ bad. If he was losing control of his magic, she’d have to step in. Emmet was a sorcerer of some considerable power and she had no desire to have that on the loose without his control. If she had to bind his magic, she would, but it would be abhorrent to both of them.

“No, the…it’s like a door, in here, that I keeps the magic in.” He rested a hand on his chest then frowned and put his hand lower. Low on his stomach. “Feels like it’s here most of the time. It’s banging open and closed.”

He looked at her and it was an expression so like Henry’s that she couldn’t help but feel a deeper concern.

At least, that was what she told herself.

“Regina, I’m scared.”

“It’s going to be alright.” She told him firmly and he immediately smiled. Trusting her completely.

A horrible decision really. She wasn’t even sure if she was lying or not.

“Can I look?” She lifted a hand and laid it on his forehead when he nodded.

He let out an explosive sigh of relief when her magic poured over him like she had upended a jug of it over his head. He closed his eyes and relaxed more fully against the couch. He was exhausted, every part of him had been tense for hours. He’d been trying to force the door closed since the diner, consciously or not, and the strain was unbearable.

Regina noticed his relief but didn’t pay much attention to it. She really should be more concerned with how their magic seemed to slot together like pieces of a puzzle, as to how they seemed to steady one another, but she was really more involved in trying to find this mysterious ‘door’ and find out why it was causing him such distress.

She started with the nexus in his head and frowned when she felt something off kilter there. Her hand lowered, pressing to his chest over his heart. The same thing. Something just not _right_ there. Lower to the one in his gut, something definitely wrong there. She hesitated for a scant moment before lowering her hand even further and settling her hand as close as she dared to the pool of energy that should swirl gently in his groin.

She snatched her hand away from the violence of that one. Wow, that was off. That was _really_ off.

“What is it?” He managed to open his eyes and turn his head to look at her.

“Uh…I think I know.” She started hesitantly. “You’re probably not going to like it.”

“Well, I really don’t like what’s going on now, so…?”

“Your, uhm, do you remember that I told you that your magic is a part of you, just as much as your organs and vascular system?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it seems I was over brief in my explanation for your magic really _does_ have a circulatory system. There are several nexuses or nodes or whatever you want to call them that are situated throughout your body and your magic will flow through them in a continuous cycle.”

“With you so far. Just about.”

“Right, well, something is…wrong about yours.”

“You said the change was a healthy one.” There was no accusation in his tone, only confusion.

“I believed it was. I had no idea that your magic was moving incorrectly throughout your body.”

“Can you fix it or is it like everything else, if you force it, it’ll hurt?”

“No-o.” Regina hesitated a moment and then slowly nodded. “I believe I can fix it.”

“Go to it. This sucks.” He lifted his hands tiredly and let them slap down onto his legs.

“Yes, well, about that…you may not like what I have to do to fix it.”

“Is it removing a body part?”

“No.”

“Cutting off my hair?”

“No.” She glared at him a little but she was actually glad that his sense of humour was intact.

“Turning me into something else?”

“No. Sort of.”

“I’ll take that.” Emmet nodded. He waved her on. “Tell me what’s doing.”

“The, uh, nodes control different aspects of your magic. The one in your head is to do with  function, the actual physics of magic. The one in your heart is willpower, your desire to do as you will with it. The one in your stomach is strength, the level of spells that you can master and the one in your groin is…sexual.”

“Sexual?”

“Yes, it’s…it’s important. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Let’s not. That’s the one that’s screwy, isn’t it?” He chuckled. “Pun not intended.”

She offered him a small smile.

“Yes, that’s the one that’s…off.”

“I suppose that makes sense. Been a bit gender queer lately.”

Regina had no idea what that meant.

“So how’re you gonna fix it, doc?”

“I have to…tilt it.”

“Tilt it?”

“It’s wavering right now, between masculine and feminine. That’s the…did you have to use the word ‘banging’?”

Emmet gusted a laugh and nodded.

“You have to admit that it sounds even more apt now.”

“I have to do no such thing.” She hid behind another glare and then continued. “My point being that this tilting back and forth is what is causing you such distress. I have to nudge it in the right direction in order for it to give you peace.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

“And you have to tip it to the male side of things.” It wasn’t a question but she nodded anyway.

“What’s stopping you?”

“If I do that, it may have repercussions.” Regina licked her lips and continued. “It may cement the true change. You will become indelibly male and never be able to ‘reset’ yourself to your female form. You could learn to change to that of your original self but…it would not be permanent.”

Emmet absorbed that for a long moment and then sucked in a deep breath.

“And if you don’t?”

“Don’t tip it to male?” He nodded and she continued. “Bad Things. Bad, losing cohesion and control, things.”

Emmet turned his head to stare numbly in front of himself. He blinked a few times and she wondered if she was even getting through to him. She knew what exhaustion could do to a brain and he _was_ exhausted. Right down to his bones. Even the flow of magic through him was sluggish.

“Well…no question then. I won’t be a danger to those around me. Turn it. Tip it. Whatever you have to do to keep me safe.”  

“You’re sure?”

“Yup.”

“I mean it, Emmet, you have to be absolutely _certain_ on this. Choice is very important in magic. Particularly when it involves another sorcerer going in there and shifting things around. You have to open yourself completely to me and trust me in a very,” Regina paused when Henry’s words came back to haunt her, “in a very intimate manner.”

Emmet looked at her and she could tell it was taking a while for all of that to filter through. Finally, he smiled and nodded.

“I already trust you. I’ve already let you in more than anyone else, told you things I’ve never told anyone. You taught me magic from the ground up, Regina, you’re under my skin with me already.”

Regina blinked at him. Stunned. She had never…thought of that.

“The Queen, Regina Mills, speechless. I’ll have to call the paper tomorrow.”

“Not stunned, reading.” She lied smoothly and he had the grace not to call her on it.

He shifted painfully on the couch so that one leg was folded up onto it and he could lean in a little closer to her, his shoulder propped against the back of the couch so he could face her.

“Go on. You have my absolute permission.”

“This is going to be strange.” Regina shifted closer to him and reached out to him. She stalled after a moment. “It’s also going to be quite…personal.”

“You’ve seen me naked and we shared a bed together just this afternoon.” He offered her a wan smile and huffed a chuckle when she glared at him.

“It was not nearly so enjoyable as that makes it sound.”

“Ah, so you think it could be enjoyable?”

“Shut up, Swan.” She told him firmly and reached out with both hands.

She laid one on his head. The heel of her palm resting on his forehead and her fingers tangling in his hair. She hesitated a bare moment before turning her other hand the opposite way and laying her hand low on his…body. Her palm over his belt buckle and her fingers over his…zipper.

“Not a word.” She warned him.

“I reserve the right to make other sounds.” His voice was low and his eyes closed but he smiled softly and she huffed out an irritated breath.

“Whatever. Now, be quiet.”

She closed her eyes as well and focussed on what she was doing rather than how _firm_ he felt under her hand.

Her magic pushed out of her body and brushed right up against his. He didn’t resist. Not even a token effort. Just let her power push right into him and rub up against his, twining around it and very nearly merging.

She let loose an explosive breath at the sensation of being so completely wrapped around someone else.

She couldn’t deny that it was very similar to sex. Similar on a deeply emotional level rather than the physical and –for a moment- it was her that resisted before she sharply got over herself and set about what she had promised to do.

Her mind poured into his, swirling into the nexus of magic in his head as that was the most stable one. It made sense, physics was something he was familiar with after all. She made herself comfortable there and examined the tangle of currents weaving in and out of it. It was like picking apart a tangle of elastic bands but she was a patient woman and she had ever been attracted to puzzles.

Once she had finished in the head, she moved to the heart.

She felt herself smile as if from far away. The heart was much steadier. He was a very simple man. Not that he was stupid just that things were big and easy for him. He didn’t get lost in the minute shades of grey that she tended to live her life in. His life could –at times- be a binary positive or negative and she envied him that. Still, she set about smoothing the pathways there too and dropped lower to the swirling power in his gut.

Herein it became complicated.

It seemed to take an age to sort the tangle of magical vessels there. Straightening them out and removing the kinks. Stabilising the structure so that it was sturdy rather than quaking with every current of magic that pulsed through it. She felt a throb once everything was fixed and her brows rose even if her eyes didn’t open at the vast strength she could feel simmering there.  

Then, when she had no further excuses, she reached even deeper into the inguinal nexus. She sucked in a deep breath, another faraway sensation, and began to pick apart the pathways of magic there. It was a delicate process and she took the utmost of care.

Emmet was a very physical person, his gender was a big part of who he was, one of the reasons she suspected he had taken to being a man so easily. It didn’t matter which sex he was just so long as he was one or the other. That would be his big stupid heart coming into it again. He needed to simplify and his body had to be one of those things that just _was._ He needed it not to be fluid.    

      Regina’s sense of self was something entirely internal. Based on the pain and hardships she had endured, the joys and love she had felt with increasing instance lately. She was simply _her_ and this suit of meat she wore, while enjoyable, could change and be fluid and it wouldn’t make much of a dent in her whatsoever.

All of this rambled on in the back of her mind as she set to untangling everything and joining all the vessels into one continuous network so that everything circulated smoothly. She waited a moment, giving the magic a little nudge to make sure that it pulsed completely around him.

She fixed tiny kinks and blockages she had missed the first time. She watched for quite some time. Just enjoying the flow of his magic and the picture it made. This big hearted simple man with magic coming out of his ears that seemed to throb and grow before her very eyes. The ‘door’ that he had kept closed on his magic was completely gone and he came into his true power with a burgeoning swell of light against her magical vision that was as beautiful as it was searing.

The heat from it was nearly unbearable but it warmed her right down to her core. She was reluctant to let it go but she had one more thing to do.

She focussed on the last nexus again and wondered for a moment what to do with it.

Well, she might not be as attached to her body as he was, but she was certainly female and she had always known one way to get a man to do what she wanted.

She had warned him, she had told him it would be personal.

Well, it looked like it was about to get a lot more personal than even she had thought.

Regina twisted her magic, amplifying the pathways in her own body and lining them up with his. She pressed closer and closer, sliding right up against his magic with her own, and…well, she did the magical equivalent of a come hither look followed up by a deep and wet kiss.

The gender of Emmet’s magic didn’t just tilt, it swung violently down into the male spectrum like a felled redwood. She felt the thunderous impact of the needle that measured the difference between genders (not as binary as most people seemed to think it was) flip a hard right completely off the scale as Emmet’s magic hurled him headlong into everything masculine.

The ramming impact against her shocked her into snapping her eyes open before she’d managed to fully break the spell. She blinked in surprise when she saw that he’d had his eyes open the entire time, watching her every move.

He looked incredible. The cold sweat gone from him, his colour improved, even his hair seemed to have perked up considerably. That was nothing compared to the way his eyes _burned_ with blue magic and glittered with golden sparks as they roved over every inch of her. 

She didn’t even get the chance to withdraw her hands from him before his hand fisted in her hair and he toppled her backwards onto the couch. His mouth crashed down on hers, his tongue thrusting into her mouth with a ferocious desire that ripped a strange purring sound from her.

She was stunned, her eyes wide, frozen beneath him. Completely stock still with no idea as to how she should react. One of her hands was still buried in his hair, the other pinned between them pressing hard against the fly of his jeans and her body suddenly caught on to what was happening and gave a unanimous yes vote to give whatever Emmet might ask of her.

At least, she would have had he not suddenly lunged away from her and sat back on his heels on the couch, staring down at her like he’d never seen her before.

Regina slowly sat up, looking at him with wide eyes, her chest heaving as much as his was and she saw the exact moment that he decided this awkward situation would be solved by him simply not being there.

“Uh, well, uhm, thanks.” He reversed off the couch as if she might bite him and stammered for a moment. “You know, uh…well. Bye.”

He all but raced for the front door, unlocking it with magic so hastily that the handle simply fell out of the wood of the door, and hurling himself out into the night.

He _ran_ all the way home.

Back in the manor, Regina sat on the couch, dazed, and slowly swung her legs over the cushions to set her feet down on the floor. She pondered what had just happened for a long moment and hummed deep in her throat.

She folded forward suddenly, catching her head in her hands and propping her elbows on her knees.

“Good grief, why didn’t you just grab his cock?”


End file.
